Donald Trump sparked outrage over a video he posted late Thursday night and then deleted on Friday morning, in which he mocks former President Barack Obama and wife Michelle Obama as animated apes.
“A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down,” a spokesperson for the White House press office told The Hollywood Reporter on Friday. The 62-second video when still on the Truth Social site at its end depicted Obama, the first Black U.S. president, and the former first lady as apes and characters from the Lion King musical where they are dancing to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
The video itself discussed false election fraud claims surrounding the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden. That includes conspiracy theories around Dominion Voting Systems as a manufacturer of voting equipment, which in turn led to Fox Corp. in 2023 settling a high-profile defamation case for $787 million with the ballot-counting company.
Before it was deleted, the Truth Social video generated widespread backlash online. California governor Gavin Newsom, a Trump critic, on his X account wrote, “Disgusting behavior by the president. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.”
Former Obama advisor Ben Rhodes also called out the video depiction of the Obamas on his X account. “Let it haunt Trump and his racist followers that future Americans will embrace the Obamas as beloved figures while studying him as a stain on our history,” he wrote.
Elsewhere, South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott wrote: “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.”